Quite a ship

Posted by David Hardy · 21 September 2009 05:46 PM

Russian billionaire has a ship built, and since he is annoyed by paparazi, fits it with an anti-photography electronic shield. Although I have to wonder if it's a bluff. The laser would have to continuously "paint" the camera, and move about as it did. It can't just pop off a brief beam since the photographer might not be snapping a picture at that instant.

Nah, the CCD isn't exposed except when the shutter is pressed, and when it's not exposed there's a mirror blocking it.

The bit that has puzzled me about this way of blanking a shot is that since CCDs are sensitive to IR light, the cameras are made with very strong IR filters mounted over the CCD. I'd expect that to do a pretty good job of filtering out an IR beam.

To answer my own question, apparently camera imagers make good retroreflectors, like few normal objects do. So they detect the light reflecting back in that special way. Some have pointed out that that might not work against DSLR cameras because the CCD is blocked by a mirror that only swings up a split second before the exposure. This system would have to have an extremely quick reaction time to detect and blind a DSLR set with a short shutter speed.

I suspect this will work as well as the "missile-proof windows to combat piracy". I suppose if one agrees that a bullet is a missile that statement would be true but then even that "glass" is only bullet resisting.